HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

US, 1981, 110 minutes, Colour.
Melissa Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane.
Directed by J. Lee Thompson.

One of the typical gory thrillers so popular at the end of the seventies. The trend was begun with Halloween (in the Psycho tradition). Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, was a very good horror thriller. Jamie Lee Curtis, the star, was to appear in such repeats as Prom Night and Terror Train. There were all kinds of imitations: The Boogey Man, Are You in the House Alone. This is a Canadian film, indistinguishable from its American counterparts except by its more explicit goriness.

Melissa Anderson is a satisfactory star. Glenn Ford has some moments as her counsellor. The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson, the English director who made some good films in the fifties including Tiger Bay. His American career in the sixties and seventies was a mixed bag of adventures and comedies. His outstanding film was The Guns of Navarone. Here he directs an implausible plot full. of red herrings with an emphasis on suspense and. goriness. His other venture into this kind of film was The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, 1975.)

The film takes an average lot of young people, sketches in their characters conventionally, focuses on a heroine and her psychological traumas - and leads us to think that she is responsible for everything. This film is a rather ugly addendum to this genre.